With ever increasing design demands, flexibility and adaptivity of unibody construction is increasingly required in order to provide vehicles that meet broader customer needs. Increases in the number of components and structures which are coupled to the unibody construction have led designers to consistently add threaded fasteners to the unibody frame. Variation in manufacturing tolerances require that the fastener couple to the unibody frame in a way which allows a degree of positional adjustment during final assembly. This positional adjustment is provided by using a female fastener which is an encaged fastener. Typically, this takes the form of a nut encaged in a structure that is attached to the inner body frame. The cage is configured so as to provide the nut with a range of movement so that when a component is coupled to the frame, the alignment of the component and frame can be adjusted until they meet manufacturing standards. Unfortunately, mating surfaces are not always perpendicular.
Prior to final coupling of the components to the non-perpendicular surfaces of the frame, however, the fastener must be aligned to reduce the incidence of cross-threading of the fastener. To date, the step of rotating a fastener into the nut will often cause the fastener to cross-thread. This causes a significant amount of rework of the fastener joint and, therefore, causes manufacturing problems in the final assembly of the product. To prevent the manufacturing problems, post-process rework is often required to ensure that the fasteners can be properly coupled with an appropriate strength.